RSF artist paints a good career for herself in a changing world

Some years ago, Anne Swan Moore was told by a friend that the “art world was changing.”

Mid-sized galleries were disappearing, and what seemed to be replacing them was large art shows.

While the Rancho Santa Fe painter said she missed the mid-sized galleries, she was grateful for large art shows, such as the Art San Diego 2017 Contemporary Art Show at the end of September in Del Mar, which she recently participated in.

"I met a lot of wonderful people at the art show here, and I think that's a huge advantage," she said. "If they're going to replace the middle galleries — where most of the people come if you have a show they know — the big art fairs are great opportunities to see a lot of good art from around the world and meet the interesting artists that accompany it."

Now, the 33-year resident of San Diego has been invited to appear in upcoming shows in Miami, New York and Las Vegas.

Moore, who was formerly a musician and has appeared in dozens of museums around the world throughout her career, first picked up a paintbrush in her 20s, when she began raising two children after her first husband died.

Her children's kindergarten teacher invited her to a painting class, and then a gallery, and “that was it” for Moore.

She first started with abstract paintings while living in California. Then, when she moved temporarily to New York, she realized most of her abstract paintings were landscapes, something she couldn't paint in the Big Apple.

She then went to the grocery store, purchased a variety of fruits and vegetables and began painting them in a contemporary way.

"That got me into my next 15-year period of creating, in a contemporary manner, very old compositions," she said. "Everything, every apple, every flower, has a bit of difference to it."

She said the difference between abstract and contemporary art, for her, is more details going into the contemporary art, like glazing.

Each painting she does can take about four months, and she says she completes about a dozen works a year.

Writing in Artweek magazine covering one of Moore’s earlier shows, art critic Robert McDonald declared that her “color sense is sophisticated and pleasing, and her control of the brush is energetic and sure. Moore’s paintings create a feeling of compatibility with nature. They require examination both from a distance and up close, both straight on and from oblique angles.” In the Los Angeles Times, Leah Goldman praised Moore’s work as “evocative.”

And while she moved from music to painting, music still plays a role in Moore's life as she creates her art to music.

She said the songs and their energy motivate her paintings.

"Anything from Janis Joplin to Bach," she said. "I was told by someone that there are very few people who can synthesize music into visual art and, apparently, that's what I do."

For more information about Moore and to see some of her work, visit her website at www.anneswanmoore.com.